Four:
Out West

In
1929, Herman Wiebensohn,
a young immigrant from Germany,
began work on a wheat farm
in southern Saskatchewan.
During his next six years
in the dust bowl, virtually
nothing grew. His only pay
for the entire period, aside
from room and board, was
a team of horses, harness
and wagon. He drove them
north in the mid-1930s looking
for work and finally, after
eleven years as a hired
man, was able to rent and
later buy his own farm.
He married, raised an equally
hard-working family, and
today in his eighties retains
his unquenchable optimism
and curiosity about life.
The Wiebensohns are representative
of many Westerners.

What
has grated on the Western
consciousness for generations,
however, is deep-seated
indifference and condescension
from successive national
governments. Shouldn’t Ottawa
represent all Canadians
equally and play no regional favourites? Canadians living
outside the West may feel
mystified by the intense
and rising disaffection
across the four Western
provinces towards the federal
government and Inner Canada
in general. Why, they ask,
are so many Westerners angry
when ten of their MPs have
held portfolios in the Mulroney
cabinet during the past
six years? The region is
fed up with watching jobs,
opportunities and people
being removed from their
natural location across
the West and relocated in
Inner Canada. Examples are
legion.

A
crown corporation at the
time, Air Canada first moved
its head office and later
its maintenance base from
Winnipeg to Montréal. Many
Westerners were enraged
with the fact that a government
in which they had placed
their confidence in 1984,
barely two years later rejected
the better and cheaper CF-18
aircraft maintenance contract
offer by a Winnipeg company
and handed it to Canadair
of Montréal instead.

In
Vancouver, a promised project
to build a Polar-8 ice breaker
was recently cancelled in
the name of restraint by
a cabinet which had failed
to reduce the deficit significantly
since taking office in 1984.
A promised natural gas pipeline
to Victoria was abandoned
on the same basis. The same
for the OSLO synthetic crude
oil plant in northern Alberta,
which will inevitably make
Canada even more dependent
on imported oil from OPEC
member countries. As well,
Ottawa’s high interest-high
dollar policy is contributing
to an increase in the number
of bankruptcies among Prairie
farmers.

Indications
of growing Western alienation
can be observed in many
opinion surveys. One of
the first formal samplings
of the Western mood, done
during 1969, indicated that
55-60% of Albertans felt
the Trudeau government was
neglecting the West. By
late 1981, following the
introduction of the National
Energy Program, an Environics
sounding showed that 82%
of Westerners agreed with
the statement that "the
West usually gets ignored
in national politics because
the political parties depend
upon Québec and Ontario
for most of their votes."

Another
poll, conducted by the same
firm shortly after the CF-18
contract was awarded, found
that more than four in five
Westerners thought the Mulroney
government played regional favourites. Shortly before
the November 1988 national
election, the Winnipeg pollster
Angus Reid reported that
two-thirds of the residents
of the four Western provinces
thought the Conservative
government favours Québec.
With the Meech Lake process
behind us, I think virtually
all Westerners would now
agree that some provinces
are more equal than others
in today’s Ottawa. An Angus
Reid poll taken in mid-summer
of 1990 indicated that 87%
of Prairie Canadians were
dissatisfied with their
national government. A few
months after the 1988 election,
a poll by Environics found
that the percentage of Westerners
who then agreed with its
statement about the West
usually being ignored had
risen to 85%. In other words,
alienation across the West
was higher after four years
of Brian Mulroney than it
was in 1981 after the introduction
of the National Energy Program
by the detested Trudeau
government.

Most
Westerners who have supported
the PC party since John
Diefenbaker’s rise to leadership
in the mid-1950s felt we
had won a government by
1986 but had lost a meaningful
voice in the government
party. These dashed hopes
created deeply felt bitterness.
The recent cancellation
of VIA Rail’s "Canadian,"
which has in one form or
another provided passenger
rail service across the
southern part of Western
Canada for more than a century,
is only one of many illustrations
of this reality. One consequence
of this is the rise of a
new party and its subsequent
success in Alberta. The
Reform party’s Deborah Grey
won a by-election in northeastern
Alberta, and the party’s
Stan Waters, a province-wide
Senate election.

In
short, the West is weary
of being dealt with as if
it were Inner Canada’s vast
domestic colony. From John
A. Macdonald to Brian Mulroney,
Westerners have been treated
mostly with polite indifference
and subdued contempt by
national governments. The
exceptions seemed to occur
only when it was in the
interests of Inner Canadians
to do something such as
peopling the region in order
to provide captive markets.
Justice for the outer regions
of Canada is as distant
today as it has ever been.
An important difference
is that Westerners are now
much better informed about
the nature of official discrimination
against us than was the
case before. With a Prime
Minister in office who,
to many Westerners, is more
an auxiliary premier of
Québec than a prime minister
of all Canadians, our demands
for equal economic and political
status are mounting.

An
Anguished Past

Western
discontent with Ottawa is
the cumulative effect of
a long series of grievances
and frustrations. Let me
recall a few of them.

Most
Canadian students, including
Westerners until more recently,
were taught through the
published works of Toronto
historians Donald Creighton,
Harold Innis and others
that the National Policy
proclaimed by John A. Macdonald
in 1879 was beneficial to
all parts of Canada. These
apologists for what I call
the core-periphery view
of Canada gave no serious
attention to the effect
of the policy on, for example,
generations of hard-working
and dollar-poor producers
in Saskatchewan.

Farmers
were long the dominant occupational
group in Prairie Canada.
Under the National Policy,
they either had to pay a
35 per cent tariff on imported
machinery from the United
States or Britain or were
forced to purchase more
expensive substitutes from
Inner Canadian manufacturers
like the Masseys. Somehow
the latter could never locate
any of their production
facilities near their important
Prairie customers. Since,
on the other hand, Western
farmers were compelled to
sell grain into fiercely
competitive international
markets, they began as early
as the mid- 1 880s to lobby
for the removal of the tariff
on farm machinery and building
materials.

Their
hopes for fair play were
dashed at the end of the
1911 national election campaign
when manufacturers, retailers,
bankers and railroaders
in Inner Canada united to
defeat a proposal by Prime
Minister Wilfrid Laurier’s
Liberals to enter into a
limited reciprocity agreement
with the United States.
In the Conservative rhetoric
of the campaign, a Prairie
grain farmer who wanted
to sell his grain in Minneapolis
was a traitor whereas a
Toronto banker who did as
much business as possible
in Manhattan was a patriot.
Incredible as it may sound,
the disloyalty charge proved
effective even in two Western
provinces: virtually all
the seats in Saskatchewan
and Alberta went Liberal.
In British Columbia, the
Conservative leader Robert
Borden’s moronic demand
for voters to choose between
the Union Jack and the Stars
and Stripes won him all
the seats. In Manitoba,
the Conservatives elected
eight often MPs, largely,
it appears, due to the strong
organization of Conservative
Premier Rodmond Roblin.
The reciprocity question
does not seem to have been
the dominant issue in the
province. Considerable Western
bitterness lingered on afterwards,
partly because the reciprocity
agreement, dealing mainly
with natural commodities
and unfinished products,
would barely have affected
the privileged in Inner
Canada.

Another
farm issue was freight rates.
Why, Western grain farmers
asked, did the CPR charge
twice as much to move wheat
in parts of the Prairies
as it did in Ontario and
Québec? Myopic Ottawa rail
officials, moreover, later
approved as "fair discrimination"
railway rates by which Manitobans
were to be charged more
for moving the same items
the same distance as Central
Canadians, residents of
what are now Alberta and
Saskatchewan were to pay
more than Manitobans, and
British Columbians were
to pay even higher rates.
It would require decades
for a united Western lobby
to correct this federal
government-sanctioned abuse.

There
were plenty of other abuses
during the era of railways.
In Manitoba, for example,
the first threat of secession
arose during 1882 over the
issue of why the CPR had
been given by Ottawa a virtual
monopoly over all goods
moving to and from the province.
When Manitoba’s premier,
John Norquay, attempted
to build a provincial railway
to the American border,
Prime Minister Macdonald
used his influence to prevent
a bond sale in London and
New York. He later forced
Norquay ‘ s ouster as premier
by spreading rumours about
financial irregularities
he probably didn’t commit.

A
decade later, the CPR obtained
a cash grant from the Laurier
government to build a new
line from Lethbridge to
Nelson, B.C. through the
Crowsnest Pass. In return,
the railway agreed to cut
its rates by approximately
a fifth on grain moving
from Winnipeg to what is
now Thunder Bay. In fact,
however, this first Crow
rate was an illusory concession
because, during the 1903-1918
period, the railway accepted
an even further cut. The
"Holy Crow" was later shown
to be rather hollow when
it came to light that shortly
before 1914 the charges
for other freight moved
on the Prairies were 30
to 50% higher than in Ontario.
The additional surcharge
for B.C. freight was not
removed by Ottawa until
1949.

Three
years earlier, as World
War II ended, both the CPR
and the CNR had applied
for a thirty per cent general
increase in rates across
Canada. Seven of the nine
provincial governments--
Ontario and Québec excepted
-- opposed it vehemently.
The government of Mackenzie
King allowed a twenty-one
per cent increase. Today,
as inflation is eroding
the real worth of the remaining
Crow benefit, it is still
for many Westerners a potent
symbol of regional grievance
primarily because it was
seen as the West’s one real
offsetting factor to a century
of industrial benefits going
to Inner Canadians as a
consequence of the tariff
and other protections created
by Ottawa.

Wheat
was a major preoccupation
of Prairie Canadians for
decades, but national governments
rarely did much to help
in its marketing. When Prime
Minister Pierre Trudeau
once asked "Why should I
sell your wheat?" he was
touching a very sensitive
Western nerve. Following
World War I, for example,
Prime Minister Arthur Meighen,
a Conservative originally
with a Manitoba constituency
but always with Inner Canadian
ideas, stopped government
control of grain marketing
despite the opposition of
most grain farmers. In 1920,
the Canadian Wheat Board,
created to cope temporarily
with chaotic world grain
export conditions, ceased
to operate. The three Prairie
wheat pools were thus forced
to market grain themselves
and did so with considerable
success. Only with the virtual
collapse of world grain
prices could Prime Minister
R.B. Bennett, himself a
Prairie MP, be persuaded
during the dying days of
his doomed mandate to re-create
the Wheat Board in 1935.
The newly elected Liberals
offered more hope to financially-desperate
farmers. Yet, Mackenzie
King also intended to eliminate
the Board four years later.
The united protest of angry
Prairie producers dissuaded
him from doing so.

Political
Subordination

For
along time, the political
inequality of Western Canadians
has been the most potent
cause of regional alienation.
In British Columbia, many
resent that Ontarians and
Québeckers dictate the policies
of every national government.
Yet, because of the province’s
dependence on forestry,
mining and fishing, the
first two of which have
until recently only rarely
interested Ottawa policy-makers,
the national government
is not constantly obtrusive
on the West coast. More
Prairie Canadians than British
Columbians are affected
on a daily basis by Ottawa
policies on transportation,
agriculture, energy exports
and resource taxation.

Some
Prairie residents recall
the shameful way their own
provinces came into being.
Manitoba became a province
in 1870 due to the earlier
successful uprising by Louis
Rid and his provisional
government at Red River.
Yet the province was so
tiny that it was simply
not viable. Moreover, unlike
the founding provinces,
it lacked ownership of its
limited land and resources.
Its boundaries were later
extended, but it was not
able to obtain ownership
of its natural resources
from Ottawa until it was
sixty years old, almost
a pensioner as a province.

Alberta
and Saskatchewan became
provinces only in 1905 following
long years of advocacy by
Frederick Haultain, chairman
of the North-West Territories
Assembly, and many territorial
residents. There is persuasive
evidence that two provinces
rather than a more viable
single one were created
by Prime Minister Laurier
mostly because he did not
want Haul-tam, a political
opponent, to become premier
of one large Prairie province.
Neither province, moreover,
even in 1905 received ownership
of its land or resources.
To compound the insult and
leave a lasting bitterness
about Ottawa politicians
generally in the minds of
many residents of the new
provinces, Laurier appointed
well-known Liberal supporters
as first lieutenant-governors
of the new provinces. They
in turn appointed Liberals
as interim premiers, and
a small army of fellow partisan
workers established as homestead
inspectors and the like
helped ensure that Liberal
governments were elected
in each of the two new provinces.

Progressives
and Reformers

The
Progressive Movement emerged
on the Prairies during the
1 920s.in response to such
tactics by Ottawa politicians.
Essentially, it was a delayed
Western revolt at the ballot
box against the major features
of Macdonald’s National
Policy and the two old parties
which were seen by many
Westerners as equally committed
to that policy. By 1918,
many Prairie farmers who
had broken virgin land with
oxen or horses felt themselves
engulfed by interest rates
and railway and grain elevator
charges. When Wilfrid Laurier’s
government, in office from
1896 to 1911, repudiated
the Liberals’ traditionally
low tariff policy, it was
the last straw for many
Prairie wheat growers.

During
the 1911 reciprocity election,
Laurier resorted to his
party’s longstanding free-trade
position, but this sharply
divided his own party which
had become as welded to
the National Policy as had
the Conservatives. Clifford Sifton, the second most
influential Liberal in the
country until his resignation
as minister during 1905,
even defected noisily to
Borden’s Tories. The high
tariff policy of the Ottawa
Conservatives helped wreck
its provincial wings in
both Saskatchewan and Alberta
after 1911; its Manitoba
affiliate all but disappeared
for several decades as well.

The
arrival on the Prairies
of thousands of settlers
from the American Midwest
after 1896 weakened regional
ties to both national parties
because many of the new
arrivals had supported American
third parties. Settlers
from England were frequently
supporters of the Labour
Party, at that time a third
party as well. In short,
the Progressive Movement
was a unique combination
of Jacksonian democracy
and British radicalism.

By
the time of the 1917 election,
Laurier’s Liberals had collapsed
across the West. Borden’s
Union government, a coalition
formed to maximize the war
effort mainly through conscription,
gave itself several legs-up
in the election: disenfranchising
citizens of foreign birth,
and so on. It won fifty-five
of fifty-seven seats in
the four Western provinces
as the result of its win-at-any-cost
measures.

In
essence, as William Morton,
the most knowledgeable authority
on the movement concluded,
the 1917 election purged
many Westerners of their
previous political loyalties.
Another major factor was
the Union government’s withdrawal
in 1918 of its promise that
farmers’ sons would be exempt
from the draft. This caused
widespread revulsion among
Western farmers. When Arthur
Meighen, the successor to
Borden, attempted to make
trade protection the main
issue of the campaign and
attacked the Progressives
for wanting to destroy the
National Policy, he was
doomed in the region. The
Conservatives won only fifty
seats, coming third after
the Progressive Party, in
the new Parliament.

The
Progressives were also determined
to destroy the Liberals
and Conservatives in the
provinces. Their allies
on the Prairies, the United
Farmers, were largely successful
in both Alberta and Manitoba
for a period. In Saskatchewan,
the Liberal government of
William Martin avoided the
1920-21 tide only by temporarily
ending his ties with the
federal Liberal party.

Whether
the Reform Party is a 1990s
successor to the Progressives
is a very lively subject
today across Western Canada.
High interest and bankruptcy
rates, major debt problems
for many Prairie farmers,
the proposed GST, the Meech
Lake process and the widespread
conviction that the Prime
Minister sees the West primarily
as a place for reliable
votes and docile MPs, have
helped recruit about 45,000
members for the new party,
mostly among Albertans and
British Columbians. A party
meeting in Victoria in the
summer of 1990 attracted
1,500 persons and, even
more surprising, an opinion
survey done at the time
indicated that 59 per cent
of Calgarians, the most
loyal PC voters in the nation
for a generation, would
vote Reform today compared
to 11 per cent who would
vote PC.

Preston
Manning, the Reform Party
leader, is widely seen in
the West as an articulate
individual whose personal
qualities contrast favourably
with the Prime Minister’s.
Jean Chrétien, the new Liberal
leader, is also well-regarded
in the West and is also
an excellent foil to Brian Mulroney. He is deemed to
be less right-wing than
the Reformers, an advantage
to some and a disadvantage
to others. He favours cultural
pluralism whereas the Reformers
are seen as both unsympathetic
to minorities and distinctly
cool to immigration. The
federal New Democrats are
strong in much of British
Columbia, across Saskatchewan,
in urban Manitoba and in
Edmonton. As of the late
summer of 1990, the next
general election is likely
to be a Gotterdammerung
in Western Canada. Only
one party, the Conservatives
(the perennial favourite),
is likely as of now to emerge
from the campaign as an
also-ran.

Recent
Years

A
dreary past in terms of
the impact of national policies
on the West was compounded
by a series of events occurring
during the 1970s and 1980s.
Each of them reinforced
for Westerners the idea
that a national government
controlled by Inner Canadians
for the benefit of Ontarians
or Québeckers, or both,
was imposing policies deeply
harmful to the legitimate
interests of Western Canadians.

Oil
was probably the most important
of these major friction
points even though it affected
mostly Alberta and Saskatchewan
as the producing provinces.
During 1974, as OPEC member
governments began to raise
world oil prices from about
$4 (U.S.) a barrel to $11
and later much higher, the
product became the focus
of fierce differences between
the Trudeau government and
the West.

In
response to the rising prices,
Ottawa first imposed an
export tax on oil the West
was exporting to the U.S.
and froze the domestic price.
Alberta premier Peter Lougheed
protested strongly at the
time. The only reason for
exporting to the south at
all, he argued, was the
persistent refusal by every
Ottawa government since
the 1960s to have the Western
oil pipeline lengthened
to Montréal. An extension
was rejected on the premise
that it was cheaper for
Canadians east of the Ottawa
river to buy oil from the
Middle East or Venezuela.
One result of this official
myopia, said Lougheed, was
that a good number of Canadian-owned
oil firms which could not
afford to operate at other
than full capacity had been
forced to sell out, usually
to Americans.

The
Alberta premier also noted
that as recently as early
1973, the federal Energy
Minister, Donald Macdonald,
later appointed by the Mulroney
government to be Canada’s
High Commissioner in Britain,
had again refused a Western
request to extend the pipeline
with the usual rationale
that offshore oil was cheaper.
Once again, rejoined Lougheed,
the national government
"had weighed Alberta’s needs
for markets against the
economic advantages to Eastern
Canada, and decided against
us."

Many
across the West wondered
why the non-renewable oil
of Alberta and Saskatchewan
was the only Canadian export
to be subject to a federal
export tax when renewable
exports, such as Québec’s
growing electricity sales
to the United States, were
not similarly taxed. The
Trudeau government replied
that oil was unique. Having
been discriminated against
so often in the past by
national governments, Westerners
were mostly unconvinced.
The continuing support of
the Western constitutional
position by the Québec governments
of both Robert Bourassa
and René Levesque became
a feature of a West-Québec
alliance which too many
Westerners later forgot
during the Meech Lake process.

Eight
months after Pierre Trudeau
and his Liberals defeated
Joe Clark’s Conservatives
in February, 1980, Marc
Lalonde introduced the West’s
most hated of all Ottawa
policies: the National Energy
Program (NEP). Suffice it
here to say that despite
attractive features, such
as promoting energy conservation,
the policy was quickly seen
across the West as deeply
harmful to the region. For
example, oil exploration
and development were redirected
by costly tax incentives
away from the Western provinces
toward the North and off
our three coasts, all of
which were controlled by
Ottawa. The incentives being
unavailable to foreign-owned
companies, a number of them
soon moved about 200 oil
drilling rigs (each employing
approximately 200 people)
to the United States. This
convinced many Westerners
that petroleum self-sufficiency
was not a goal of the NEP
at all. The real objective,
it appeared, was for an
anti-Western regime in Ottawa
to continue buying off-shore
oil at $37 (U.S.) a barrel
(the price as of 1980),
from sources such as Libya
while at the same time refusing
to buy it from numerous
capped wells in Alberta
and Saskatchewan for $18
a barrel.

One
of the unstated objectives
of the NEP was to relocate
the leadership of the energy
industry to Ottawa. Rather
clearly, the plan was to
create a new community of
energy leaders with a primary
loyalty to the federal government.
It would join the industrial-financial
elites within Inner Canada
who have historically identified
closely with Ottawa because
of various federal measures
such as the Bank Act. The
NEP was thus profoundly
anti-Outer Canada because
until 1980 the oil and gas
industry was one of the
very few sectors based in
Western Canada.

Reorganizing
the ownership for the industry
was a major goal of the
NEP. The federal government
took advantage of the rapid
rise in international oil
prices to buy out some foreign-owned
parts of our domestic industry.
To persuade targeted firms
unwilling to sell to do
so, the NEP created a series
of tax incentives and other
measures which discriminated
blatantly in favour of Canadian-owned
companies. The best known
of these was the twenty-five
per cent back-in provision
through which Ottawa was
to take an automatic one
quarter of the revenue from
any oil or gas discovered
on lands it controlled.
The government of Canada
soon found itself accused
internationally of legislated
theft. The avalanche of
protests following the initial
application of the back-in
provision to expensive discoveries
made before its enactment
finally persuaded the Trudeau
government to offer compensation
for about a quarter of the
expenditures made.

During
the first year of the NEP,
foreign ownership dropped
from seventy-four per cent
to about sixty-six per cent
as Canadian companies, including
Dome Petroleum and Petro-Canada,
made huge buy-outs of foreign-owned
properties. The prestigious
Organization for Economic
Cooperation and Development (OECD), however, ruled that
the methods being used violated
its resolutions banning
member nations from discriminating
against foreign-owned companies.
In the international community
at large, many concluded
that the NEP was a key part
of a general campaign by
Pierre Trudeau’s last government
against foreign investment
of any kind.

The
overall consequences for
Alberta and Saskatchewan
were devastating. The number
of oil wells drilled in
Western Canada dropped from
550 in mid-1980 to about
120 by 1982. The number
of drilling rigs in service
across Canada fell from
650 to 450 shortly after
the NEP was introduced.
Thousands of jobs in Western
Canada were lost, mostly
in the drilling and service
sectors of the energy industry.
Proposed mega-projects such
as the Alsands plant at
Fort McMurray were cancelled.
Numerous Western businesses
went into bankruptcy. Many
careers and families were
broken; home mortgages were
foreclosed in large numbers.

During
the summer of 1982, Britain’s
respected Economist magazine
summed up the NEP in politely
brutal language: "The NEP
has come close to wrecking
an industry that until October,
1980 was drilling like fury
finding enormous volumes
of gas and much new oil,
creating jobs and investment
all over Canada and increasingly
using Canadian-owned capacity
in exploration and management
... The NEP drove Canadian
exploration and service
companies into the United
States until only 150 drilling
rigs were left, the lowest
number since the 1960s de-Canadianization,
in effect. Owners of capped-in
gas wells had big debts
and no cash flow. Oil serving
companies in Alberta withered
into bankruptcy."

The
Ottawa-prescribed low domestic
price of oil since the 1970s
was calculated by Robert
Mansell, a Calgary economist,
to have cost Albertans alone
approximately $60 billion.
Yet the NEP was loathed
even by Western Canadians
who had no direct daily
contact with the energy
industry. In the West, it
was a major reason for disaffection.
It even provided an impetus
to separatist sentiments
for it blatantly discriminated
against two Western provinces,
maintained the domestic
price of conventional oil
and gas resources at about
half the world price, and
subsidized the consumption
of imported oil. It was
a Western economic and social
nightmare.

1982
Constitution

As
a result of the NEP and
a long series of other anti-West
attitudes associated with
the government of Pierre
Trudeau since 1968, the
overall Western mood was
anything but positive by
1981. One opinion survey
done in March of 1981 ominously
revealed that 61 per cent
of respondents in all four
Western provinces agreed
with the statement, "the
West has sufficient resources
and industry to survive
without the rest of Canada."
Between October, 1980 and
March, 1981, support for
outright regional independence
grew from five to seven
per cent, and eleven per
cent in Alberta. Part of
the worsening Western attitude
was created by the process
and substance of Prime Minister
Trudeau’s constitutional
package.

Following
the May 20, 1980 Québec
referendum in which a sixty
per cent majority rejected
sovereignty-association,
the premiers of all ten
provinces and Mr. Trudeau
agreed on a twelve-item
agenda to be studied over
the summer. In early July,
however, the federal government
revealed out-of-the-blue
a set of new demands for
greater powers over the
economy if any other legislative
powers were to be surrendered
to the provinces. Later
that summer a memorandum
drafted by the Clerk of
the Privy Council, Michael Pitfield, a quintessential
Inner Canadian from Montréal’s
upper Westmount, was leaked:
it outlined a federal strategy
for unilateral patriation
of the constitution from
Britain by Ottawa.

The
political sky darkened even
further a few weeks later
when the eleven first ministers
met. Another memorandum,
this time prepared by Michael
Kirby, an adviser to the
Prime Minister, became public
during the conference, causing
an uproar among the premiers
and later across the nation.
In it, it was suggested
that Alberta might be isolated
on the sensitive issue of
control of natural resources
if the federal cabinet could
make a deal with Premier
Blakeney of Saskatchewan.
Whether in consequence of
this or because of conflicting
visions of the national
future, the first televised
conference ended in stalemate
on all twelve agenda items.

At
the end of September, the
Prime Minister declared
he would patriate the constitution
without provincial consent
and have simultaneously
enacted by the British Parliament
a Charter of Rights to apply
in both the federal and
provincial jurisdictions.
Joe Clark on behalf of the
Official Opposition denounced
these proposals the same
day; the New Democrats through
their leader, Ed Broadbent,
indicated general support
for the package, thereby
dividing their caucus on
east-west lines. Three Western
premiers -- B.C.’s William
Bennett, Alberta’s Peter Lougheed, and Manitoba’s
Sterling Lyon -- announced
they would join two other
premiers in a court challenge
to the government’s constitutional
proposal. Saskatchewan’s
Blakeney government joined
them several months later.

In
mid-March, when the cabinet
introduced a form of closure
in the Commons on its constitutional
resolution, Conservative
MPs began a filibuster that
lasted for two weeks. It
ended when the Newfoundland
Court of Appeal, differing
strongly from the majority
view of the Manitoba Appeal
Court on the same issues,
ruled unanimously that the
resolution was unconstitutional.
Effectively beaten in its
attempt to avoid having
the Supreme Court of Canada
decide the matter, the Prime
Minister agreed to hold
off a final vote on its
resolution until that Court
could decide the issue.
By May, a Gallup Poll indicated
that two-thirds of both
Prairie and B.C. residents
opposed the proposal that
the British Parliament should
be asked to amend the constitution
by adding an entrenched
charter of rights before
returning it to Canada.

At
that point, the "Gang of
Eight", i.e., all the premiers
with the exception of Ontario’s
William Davis and New Brunswick’s
Richard Hatfield, advanced
a proposal calling for patriation
alone, the Alberta amendment
formula (which required
constitutional amendments
to be passed by Parliament
and the legislatures of
seven of the provinces holding
half the population of Canada),
and no Charter of Rights.
This collided with the amendment
formula favoured by Pierre
Trudeau which would have
provided vetoes to Ontario
and Québec alone, whereas
full legislative support
in three Western and three
Atlantic provinces would
be necessary to stop a proposal.
The Federal-Provincial Relations
Office in Ottawa, moreover,
conceded to me at the time
that it knew of no other
federal democracy which
assigned, as proposed by
the Prime Minister, differing
weight to residents of different
provinces for constitutional
amendment processes. The
notion offended Westerners
deeply.

In
the fall of 1981, the Supreme
Court of Canada ruled by
a majority of seven to two
that the Trudeau package
was legal, but six judges
also said it violated our
constitutional conventions.
A first ministers’ conference
was called for early November
in a last attempt to reach
an agreement. The famous
compromise was reached in
a hotel kitchen late at
night on November 4th; it
proved acceptable to all
first ministers except for
René Levesque. It quickly
passed the Canadian and
British Parliaments and
was proclaimed by Queen
Elizabeth in mid-April,
1982 at a large outdoor
ceremony on Ottawa’s Parliament
Hill.

The
overall damage in terms
of national unity was high
in the West. Even those
of us who favoured an entrenched
charter of rights on the
basis that some rights should
be beyond the reach of any
legislators were deeply
offended by the process.
A national government which
held our region in barely-concealed
contempt had actually tried
to relegate all Outer Canadians
to second-class status in
its preferred constitutional
amendment formula. The active
role of Saskatchewan’s Allan
Blakeney and Roy Romanow
in the final compromise
contributed to the massive
defeat of the Blakeney government
in the April, 1982 Saskatchewan
election. The first separatist
MLA in Western Canada, Gordon
Kesler, was elected at about
that time in a by-election
in Olds-Didsbury in central
Alberta.

The
1982 Constitution achieved
little in terms of a constitutional
vision for Outer Canadians
generally and Westerners
in particular. For example,
the decades-old inability
of majority parliamentary
governments to address real
problems of the West was
ignored. British Columbia
pushed for Senate reform
but won little support from
the other first ministers.
The amendment formula endorsed
by the four Western provinces
quite understandably reinforced
the premiers’ view that
they alone speak for their
respective residents on
national affairs because
future amendments became
exclusively the prerogative
of eleven legislatures.
Direct citizen participation
in the amendment process
through referenda as customary
in other federations, for
example Australia, was blocked.

Another
opportunity was lost to
restructure Ottawa’s institutions
so that politicians in our
national capital might speak
effectively for the regions.

Maintaining
CF-18s

Few
Inner Canadians, including
Brian Mulroney, seem to
understand how much the
awarding of the maintenance
contract for the CF-18 aircraft
continues to rankle residents
of all four Western provinces.

The
issue arose in 1986 when
the British-owned Ultramar
Canada closed an essentially
obsolete Montréal ore refinery.
When the loss of 350 jobs
in East Montréal caused
an uproar in the House of
Commons for weeks afterward,
Prime Minister Mulroney
appointed a committee of
ministers, headed by Robert
de Cotret, to consider ways
to promote growth in the
Montréal region. De Cotret
soon spotted a pending contract
to maintain 138 CF-18jet
fighters purchased from
the U.S. as a convenient
way of creating some future-oriented
jobs in greater Montréal.
His problem was that a team
of 75 technicians from three
federal departments had
already concluded that the
tender by Winnipeg’s Bristol
Aerospace was better in
terms of proven expertise
and about four million dollars
cheaper than the competing
one by Canadair of Montréal.

In
the spring of 1986, de Cotret
as president of the Treasury
Board simply overruled the
officials’ recommendation
and directed that Canadair
should obtain the contract.
In October, the full Treasury
Board of six ministers,
including one from the West
(B.C.’s Frank Oberle), so
decided.

The
reaction to the announcement
in the West was uniformly
vehement. Had the integrity
of the federal tendering
procedure vanished? Had
Bristol not made a cheaper
and technically better bid?
The losing bidder indicated
it would have to lay off
a hundred employees and
would probably sue the Mulroney
government for the $5 million
it had spent to prepare
its bid in good faith. Further
bad news came when it was
revealed that Canadair,
in order to do the work,
would have to spend $30
million to purchase technology
from Bendix-Avelex Inc.
of Toronto and the Canadian
taxpayer would have to pay.
Westerners generally concluded
that Brian Mulroney was
indistinguishable from Pierre
Trudeau on the issue of
regional justice.

An
Environics Research Group
poll done after the decision
found that, "84 per cent
of Western Canadians --
the highest of any area
of the country -- think
the government does not
treat all parts of Canada
equally." Even the Calgary
Herald, at that time and
probably still the most
loyal booster of the Mulroney
government editorially among
all Western dailies, observed:
"Instead of a national government,
we have national decisions
made on a selfish regional
basis for purely political
reasons. There is nothing
unusual in that. Just add
it to the long catalogue
of injustices done to the
West."

The
NEP and the CF-18 together
highlighted for many Western
Canadians their continuing
colonial status within Confederation.
Each of them, severely harming
the region’s future economic
prospects, were made by
national governments of
different political colours
which placed other considerations
ahead of the legitimate
economic aspirations of
Western Canadians.

The
New West

Recently,
I was told that many Quebeckers
believe Westerners are still
almost entirely people of
British origin. The reality
is that more than seventy
distinct ethno-cultural
communities can now be identified
across Western Canada.

Between
1880 and 1914, several million
immigrants from Europe and
numerous other parts of
the world settled across
the West. They were attracted
by the promise of a better
life in "the last best West."
Literally dozens of communities
of diverse ethnic and cultural
background arrived in the
region, creating a kaleidoscope
of languages, dress and
customs unique in our country.
A visitor first applied
the term "mosaic" to Canadians
during a 1922 visit to the
Prairies.

The
Prairie population ballooned
from about 400,000 in 1901
to 2.4 million by 1931.
A newcomer climbing off
a train in Winnipeg just
before World War I would
meet people on nearby Main
Street speaking almost every
language then spoken. Half
of the Prairie residents
at the time had been born
in another country; fifteen
years later the share was
still one in three. By the
1931 census, Prairie residents
who were British by origin
had already dropped to about
half the Prairie total.
Various East European groups,
including Ukrainians, Austro-Hungarians,
Poles and Russians, numbered
about twenty percent, and
West Europeans, German,
Dutch and French, including
Québeckers, also had about
a fifth of the population.

Present
thousands of years earlier
were a host of Indian tribes
which had settled on the
Prairies. Later, while the
fur trade flourished, French-
and English-speaking Métis
became the second founding
community of the region.
A group of hearty Scots
helped found the precarious
Selkirk settlement in the
first decades of the 1 800s,
but it was not until after
the CPR was completed to
the Rocky Mountains during
1884-85 that the first of
four successive waves of
mostly British newcomers
began to arrive. The largest
group came between 1897
and 1913, bringing almost
equal numbers of pioneers
from the other provinces,
Britain, America and Continental
Europe. There were also
Icelanders, Mennonites,
Jews and other communities.

Immigration
to Canada stopped during
the First World War. The
next large migration arriving
during the 1920s was similar
to the 1897-1913 one in
terms of origin. Immigration
was again stopped by Ottawa
between 1931 and 1941. The
final wave started after
1945 and is still continuing:
it consisted of Europeans
uprooted by the war and,
after 1962, newcomers from
most Pacific Rim nations.

Much
of the credit for the diversity
on the Prairies goes to
Clifford Sifton. As Immigration
Minister in Laurier’s government
between 1897 and 1905, he
spent large sums of tax
money to lure farmers from
Europe, Britain and America.
His successor, Frank Oliver,
increased recruitment in
Britain and reduced it in
Europe. The government of
Robert Borden and Arthur
Meighen held the door open
to unskilled British immigrants
between 1911 and 1921, but
continued a Laurier measure
which in practice barred
most Asians and Arabs. In
the mid-1920s, Mackenzie
King as Liberal Prime Minister
restarted recruiting in
Central and Eastern Europe;
almost 370,000 Europeans
came to Canada before 1931,
when R.B. Bennett closed
the gates to almost everyone.

The
pattern and sequence of
settlement in British Columbia
differed from that on the
Prairies. Thousands of years
after the province’s aboriginal
peoples arrived from Asia
came the province’s first
settlers in the mid-1800s,
including a number from
south China. Most of those
arriving before 1890 came
from Britain and it was
then that Victoria took
on its pronounced British
flavour. The 1890-1914 wave
included Americans, Britons,
Chinese, Japanese, Scandinavians
and Germans. People from
Central, Western and Eastern
Europe comprised the largest
numbers of those entering
B.C. during the 1920s. The
catastrophic impact on the
Prairies of the Great Depression
caused hundreds of thousands
of its residents to move
westward. Since 1945, enough
newcomers have moved in
from virtually everywhere
that the province’s population
is now about three million.

In
consequence, the demographics
of all four Western provinces
were significantly different
from Canada as a whole by
the time of the 1986 national
census. In all three Prairie
provinces, less than forty
per cent of the residents
claimed a single country
of origin in Britain or
France. British Columbia
was slightly over forty
per cent, contrasted to
Ontario and all four Atlantic
provinces where considerably
more than forty per cent
of residents claim descent
from a single family in
the British Isles.

Today,
and increasingly since the
beginning of this century,
the West has developed a
character that is pluralistic
in culture, religion and
politics. This has been
possible partly because
no ethno-cultural community
was numerically dominant.
Some might say the British
were, but no one who knows
the history of those islands
would group the Scots, Irish,
Welsh and English together
indistinguishably. In practice,
most members of every cultural
community, including the
larger ones, today believe
that all people are of equal
worth and that all should
have the right to choose
their own lifestyle within
the framework of cherished
Canadian values like non-violence,
civility and respect for
others.

Consequently,
a pattern of permissive
differentiation, not coercive
assimilation, emerged at
an early date and has set
very firmly in the West.
More than in any other part
of Canada, multiculturalism
is all-inclusive. No one’s
community has been left
out, because each one is
seen as an integral part
of the regional kaleidoscope.
Bitter experiences of prejudice
and discrimination are gone.
The region has emerged confidently
from its aboriginal past
into a multicultural present
and future. A unique mixture
of ethno-cultural co-operation
now exists.

There
is a Western consensus that
the survival of all ethno-cultural
communities is beneficial
to the individual satisfaction
and self-development of
their members, since it
builds a sound climate in
which cultural differences
do not limit social participation.
The preservation of cultural
communities also advances
and enriches the community
as a whole since each of
them has a valued contribution
to make to the whole. Sustained
interaction between diverse
groups on the basis of mutual
respect and equality is
an enriching social experience:
each group affects the others,
while maintaining its identity.

The
various communities can
provide wise counsel at
a time of national tension
and stress. Former Czechs
and Slovaks know from experience
the dangers of national
fragmentation that have
long imperiled the existence
of their land of origin.
Many Flemish- and French-speaking
Belgians, Serbs and Croatians
from Yugoslavia, and newcomers
from Pacific Rim, African,
and Caribbean nations also
know just how fragile can
be the human glue which
holds countries together
during periods of adversity.
Newcomers from Lebanon similarly
can tell what happens where
one’s membership in a particular
religion or cultural community
is the most important component
of citizenship and that
Canada must avoid the Lebanese
experience at all costs.

Western
Economy

British
Columbians and Albertans,
who constitute just under
three quarters of the labour
force in Western Canada,
did not do well during the
economic swings of the 1980s.
Recent improvements in both
provinces were caused by
differing factors: in B.C.,
rapid interprovincial migration
into the province fuelled
booms in its construction
and service sectors; in
Alberta, improved oil and
natural gas prices sparked
new energy investments and
a comparative boom in housing.

The
1990 forecasts for Prairie
farmers are poor, due to
four previous years of droughts,
collapsing world grain prices,
high interest rates, the
highest dollar value in
a decade, and some major
international assaults on
Canada’s supply management
programs. In early 1990,
Statistics Canada foresaw
a more than two-thirds drop
in net farm incomes for
all three Prairie provinces.
European farmers receive
$700 a metric ton for wheat
compared to the $150 Canadians
receive. Prairie grain families
are being crushed by the
ongoing multi-billion dollar
export subsidy battle between
Washington and Brussels.
By the end of 1990, an estimated
one-third of Saskatchewan
farmers could face lawsuits
from creditors. Overall,
despite the excellent Prairie
crops indicated for 1990,
world conditions remain
worse than 1986 and 1987,
themselves among the worst
since the Depression. Westerners
also know that our regional
share of jobs in the deeply
depressed agricultural sector
is virtually twice the national
average.

Major
adversity in the farm sector
invariably leads to difficulties
elsewhere. Saskatchewan’s
population is continuing
to drop, urban homes remain
unsold in Regina and Saskatoon
for long periods (in the
late summer of 1990, I observed
a home for sale in Yorkton
for $26,500), and pessimism
returns across the province.
The large agricultural sectors
in Alberta and Manitoba
are similarly affected.

Fortunately,
spontaneous diversification
is occurring across the
West, assisted by a highly-motivated
entrepreneurial spirit and
a dynamic technical sector.
Aerospace, agricultural
machinery, petrochemical
and construction materials
are doing particularly well
at exporting. The skills
of Westerners in communications,
recreation and resource
development are well known
and many of them are marketable
outside Canada.

A
major obstacle to further
diversification across the
West is lack of investment
in manufacturing. A recent
study by the Canada West
Foundation showed that regional
manufacturing investment
amounted to a negligible
six per cent of total national
investment. In order to
even remain competitive
in national resource exploration,
Westerners must adopt new
technologies such as computer-aided
design.

Research
and development spending
in all four provinces is
below the national average.
While doing more than half
of such spending nationally,
the private sector does
only just over a third of
it in the West. As for the
federal government, only
nineteen per cent of its
research and development
spending is applied to the
West, though this part of
the country holds almost
thirty per cent of the national
population. Ontario and
Québec together receive
three-quarters of overall
science and technology spending.
This makes it more difficult
for high-tech manufacturing
in a number of sectors to
expand in the West.

Is
it any wonder that the relative
generosity of the Mulroney
government toward the West’s
traditional oil and grain
sectors has been compared
so negatively to its support
for various industries of
the future in Inner Canada?
The CF-18 contract is a
continuing reminder of Ottawa’s
inability to see Westerners
as anything other than wheat
farmers, tree chokers and
oil wildcatters. The vast
majority of Westerners,
like other Canadians, are
in services of various kinds.
The way to a less volatile
future obviously points
in the direction of processing
natural resources, adding
value to them and pursuing
technological advances.
Prairie Canada canola seeds
should not be exported in
unprocessed form to be crushed
into cooking oil in Japan.
B.C. logs should not be
shipped to Asia for processing
into finished plywood.

Canada-U.S.
Free Trade Agreement

It
is probably too early to
measure the full impact
of the Canada-U.S. Free
Trade Agreement (FTA) on
the Canadian economy. Some
consequences are already
observable: Canada’s trade
surplus with the States
has been reduced, jobs have
been lost and plants shut
down, companies have relocated
to the U.S. or Mexico and
pressure from American firms
has intensified. The critics
claim that 250,000 jobs
were lost in the first year;
its defenders insist that
200,000 have been directly
created.

Two
years ago, I supported the
FTA believing it was in
the best interests of both
Western Canada and all other
parts of the country. I
saw in the agreement a way
to reduce the colonialism
created by national governments
over decades at the expense
of Outer Canada in general
and the West in particular.
Today Jam inclined to think
that some provisions are
hurting parts of the country
that can least afford further
decline in economic growth.

In
the opinion of some economists,
the FTA could increase the
instability which characterizes
the Western Canadian economy
because many of our exports
are concentrated in very
volatile markets and dominated
by a comparatively small
number of natural resources.
Despite the agreement, the
likelihood of continuing
trade disputes with the
U.S., especially in natural
resource matters, remains
very high unless both nations
can negotiate over five
to seven years a mutually
agreed-upon definition of
"subsidy." Some Canadian
practices, including provincial
Crown ownership of most
natural resources, and some
non-market pricing rules,
are otherwise likely to
lead to more anti-dumping
and countervail lawsuits
to follow the softwood lumber,
potash and hog trade ones
already completed.

The
future of marketing boards
across Canada is in issue
because rural Westerners,
like many people in all
ten provinces, see them
as essential to the viability
of important farm sectors.
The agreement requires the
elimination of Canadian
tariffs on the importation
of processed foods from
the United States. If this
happens on a host of processed
foods, the result will inevitably
be that much of Canada’s
very large food processing
industry will relocate production
to the U.S. and export back
to Canada. Our marketing
boards would then virtually
cease to operate because
fewer and fewer processors
in Canada would buy their
products.

In
the matter of ice cream
and yogurt, a test case
emerged when the Canadian
dairy industry learned that
the twelve to fifteen per
cent tariff on these products
was to be phased out. In
response, the Mulroney government
attempted to replace the
tariff with what are termed
in trade law as quantitative
restrictions on American
imports of both products.
The U.S. government sought
a ruling from a tribunal
of the General Agreement
on Tariffs and Trade (GAY!’).
It concluded that the use
of such restrictions to
protect our food processing
industry was illegal. The
prospects of amending the
GATT to allow the use of
quantitative restrictions,
according to the Ottawa
trade expert Mel Clark,
are virtually nil. The probable
result therefore is that
thousands of Western, Atlantic
and other Canadian farmers,
who have earned a decent
living within our marketing
board framework, face an
uncertain future because
of this feature of the bilateral
agreement. Many of them
who supported free trade
in the past, assuming their
marketing boards could survive
under it, have changed their
minds.

The
FTA was never intended to
be a panacea to Canada’s
economic problems. I believe
it might still assist us
to enter the wider global
trading arena if GATT succeeds
in further liberalizing
world trade. Some of its
provisions might well have
to be re-negotiated if it
is to work the way it was
intended and before all
the hopes Westerners and
other Outer Canadians invested
in it are completely shattered.

"Rich
Uncle Alberta"

The
lack of Western diversification
doesn’t satisfactorily explain
the volatility of the Alberta
economy. Why were the province’s
booms and busts since 1980
significantly worse than
in Texas or Oklahoma, two
American states with similar
reliance on oil and agriculture?
Why did the province experience
a net loss of about 100,000
people between 1980 and
1989? During the decade,
home prices collapsed, fourteen
provincial financial institutions
failed or were forced to
amalgamate and approximately
a third of the credit unions
were placed under direct
government supervision.
The social and human costs
to thousands of Alberta
families and individuals
were enormous.

The
Calgary economist Robert
Mansell points out that
employment in the province
did not return to its pre-1981
recession high until May,
1987, compared to November,
1983 for Ontario, 1984 for
Atlantic Canada and June,
1984 for Québec. Contrary
to the conventional wisdom
in Ottawa that it was a
drop in oil and farm prices
that caused the most severe
Alberta recession since
the Great Depression, Mansell
notes that the average price
for oil and gas producers
did not decline until 1986
and farm receipts remained
quite stable during the
period.

By
1980, Alberta’s petroleum
industry accounted directly
for almost one-third of
the provincial economic
output, approximately one-half
of all construction starts,
and about 80 per cent of
the provincial government’s
yearly spending. The growing
dependence on the oil industry
made Albertans increasingly
vulnerable to anything that
threatened new investment
in the sector, including
the NEP and high interest
rates. Another important
factor was that by 1980
Ottawa’s taxation, spending
and energy policies as a
whole were withdrawing about
$15 billion more each year
than the national government
was injecting into the province
through all forms of federal
spending. A major consequence
of this was the transfer
of numerous jobs and incomes
out of the province, which
severely weakened the provincial
economy.

After
1982, the Alberta government
increased its spending significantly
in an attempt to stimulate
the economy. Federal policies,
however, were simultaneously
more than neutralizing the
provincial efforts and creating
a major drag on the economy.
In short, the lingering
post-1981 recession in at
least one Western province
was mostly induced by discriminatory
Ottawa policy rather than
caused by over-dependence
on natural resources. Ending
discriminatory fiscal, monetary
and energy policies is essential
to restoring prosperity
in Alberta.

Albertans
wonder why Alberta, and
not our largest and richest
province Ontario, has continued
between 1980 and 1988 to
be the only province from
which Ottawa removes more
in federal taxes than it
spends. Why should parts
of Outer Canada be the cash
cows of Confederation, providing
cheap inputs for the industrial
heartland? For example,
while the Mulroney government
continues to spend more
in Ontario than it raises
in federal revenues, thereby
increasing inflation there,
his Finance Minister argues
that sky-high interest rates
are necessary to dampen
inflation. In August, 1990,
the Prime Minister told
his constituents in Charlevoix
that the national economy
was neither in recession
nor approaching one. High
interest rates, he declared,
were pushing inflation out
of the economy. That same
week wages across the country
went up at a 5.3 per cent
yearly rate, prices rose
by 4.3 per cent and economic
growth was zero.

Some
additional data on federal
spending and taxation by
province released by Mansell
in August of 1990 were equally
disturbing. Between 1961
and 1988, Albertans contributed
$145.7 billion (expressed
as 1990 dollars) more to
Ottawa’s revenues than they
received in federal spending
and transfers (Fig. 4).
British Colurnbians were
the only other net contributors
to Confederation during
the same period. Ontarians,
who might have been expected
to have contributed generously
to "have-not" provinces,
received $24 billion more
in spending than they paid
in taxes during these years.
Most of the national government
is located in Ontario and
the argument is frequently
made that this explains
the anomaly. Yet how then
to explain that between
1970 and 1979 Ontario made
a net contribution to residents
of other provinces of about
$3.6 billion? Mansell ‘s
latest figures also indicate
that since 1980 alone Québec
received $95billion
from Ottawa more than it
contributed to the national
government.

The
Cost of Unity
to the Federal Government
1961-1988

Figure
4

Prospects

Overall,
the West’s experience within
Confederation remains a
story of buoyancy, optimism
and confidence meeting continuous
rebuffs from the various
agencies of the national
government. In consequence,
the region has yet to achieve
political and economic equality
with Ontario and Québec.

Containing
approximately 7.5 million
residents, who constitute
the second largest population
grouping in the country
after Ontario, Western Canada
continues to feel largely
overlooked and neglected,
frustrated and impotent.
The time has clearly arrived
for the region to achieve
equal partnership with all
other regions of the country.
Political and economic equality
is the only means of ending
Western alienation.